video [isonade hunting tips]; un: hunter

[notched]

[ The woman on camera is petite with a pretty face. Her hair had been braided back neatly at some point, but now loose strands of it hang around her face. Her clothes are loose and androgynous; always in rough-spun breeches and sturdy boots. She is sitting in what appears to be one of the Tamamo pleasure dens, the phone balanced on its side with a stand so she can speak to it without holding it.

That's as far as she's gotten with technology, it mostly baffles her, but she has something to say: ]

Isonade hunters. Listen well. All Shark Giants are capable of a deadly, four-legged charge attack and they swipe at you as they come into range. Dodge to the side, not backwards, so that you may more easily circle to their back.

Bait and kite them until you are able to land your backstab cleanly. Their hide is tough, you must commit in full. But they will fall swiftly if their spine is severed.

If you have not the poise to withstand their charges, you must stay at range from them and work slowly, steadily. They will tire with the cumulative damage to themselves.

Gather as many Haniwa as you can to take with you. They have no particular defense against accursed attacks, these will be a great boon to you as a projectile. Do not linger long with them in your possession, however, or it will be you who suffers from their taint.

[ She goes silent for a moment. Studying the camera, something she is not used to speaking to. Her dark eyes are ever so slightly disconcerting, a little distant and empty.

But she quirks a small, courteous smile, ]

Happy hunting.

Comments

[killtime]

[ Andy's always been more of a pack animal herself, but there's nothing wrong with a lone wolf type. This one's clearly not having any issues handling things on her own. ]

Weapon of choice?

[notched]

We call it the notched whip.

[ It's nearby actually, she lifts the metal coil in her hand. ]

It collapses into a bladed cane, for thrusting attacks.

[ She pauses for a moment. ]

I am to do an exhibition... for our visitors...

[ ...if you want to come see it in action... Anna's not terribly enthused about being required to perform. ]

[killtime]

[ Wryly, but maybe a little admiringly too: ]

Exotic.

[ Humans were simple in Andy's time. They had simple tools. Simple weapons. She's perfectly good with a gun now, but some part of her still likes to hack and slash. ]

Entertaining seems like a waste of your talent.

[notched]

It is a Hunter's trick weapon. We have many varieties, ingenuity is in our favor.

[ Anna's affect is quite empty, she doesn't sound particularly proud even though she must be. ]

It is, but neither does this town require my talents.

[killtime]

Doesn't it? [ Dryly: ] Makes a girl wonder what you're used to hunting.

[notched]

Beasts, abominations, nightmares.

[killtime]

Sounds fun.

[notched]

[ ...In a way. But judging by how reticent Anna is, probably not actually. ]

Yharnam had acquired the attention of the Great Ones. Old gods. If you think this city feels cursed with the presence of the haniwa... you have felt nothing.

[killtime]

Sweetheart, I don't know a fucking thing about old gods and curses. [ Not entirely true, but the world she comes from is largely ordinary. Except for her. ] I'm just along for the ride with this shit.

[notched]

More's the better.

[ You really don't want to know. If the trauma radiating off of Anna is anything to go off of. ]

[killtime]

[ Dryly: ]

Worse than literal hell, huh.

[notched]

I know what hell is. This is not the place.

[ The Hunter's Nightmare, one of several connected dream realms which roil and loop. This one created as a curse against the Hunters who killed so wantonly. It captures them when their sight rots out of their heads and gives them a fetid lake of blood and bodies to oversee alongside the deformed memory of one of their greatest champions. It is a place of madness and torment. ]

If hell was meant to punish me... They'd have left me as I was.

[ Her sight beginning to blur. The blood beginning to take her, downward, ever downward. ]

[killtime]

So what's this place then? A fucking vacation?

[ Maybe it is. With the shit she's done in her long life, she definitely deserved worse than what she's getting down here. ]

[notched]

Freedom from a curse.

[ Anna's dark stare pierces unnervingly, she is looking at things not of this world. Tormented and aware of secrets beyond the veil. ]

One I could not break on my own.

[killtime]

[ That hits a little closer to home than Andy might like. ]

That's usually how curses are, I guess. Yours was that bad?

[notched]

The city is frozen in one of its last desperate nights. Nothing ever changes. It is always the night of the hunt.

[ She blinks slowly. ]

I hadn't seen the sun rise in...

[ Who. The. Fuck. Knows. ]

[killtime]

That's a shame. It's a nice thing, a sunrise.

[notched]

[ She doesn't even have the words to express just how nice. ]

...I make certain to watch it from the rooftops.

[ Before it is inevitably gone again. There's something in the way she says this which expresses that fear. Her flat affect, her haunted eyes. ]

[killtime]

People have killed for less. Sold their souls for less.

[ Sunrise might be one of the only things she never got tired of, in all the years. She doesn't want to think about what it would have been like, if she'd had to endure the last seven millennia without it. ]

[notched]

Purpose. I sold mine away for brotherhood.

[ It doesn't matter to Anna to be so strangely open. That's simply the reality of the situation and that is the reality that Anna lives moment to moment. ]